Depressed? Easy on the steak

In March 2010, French researchers found that cooking beef lead to a significant degradation of tyrosine and tryptophan in meat.

Why should you care? Because these are two critical amino acids which help fight off depression.

Why care about tyrosine?

• Tyrosine is an amino acid which is a precursor to the neurotransmitter dopamine.
• Dopamine deficiencies have been linked with depression (and sugar cravings).
• Here’s the thing: depressed people are often told to eat more tyrosine-rich foods. However, most go-to tyrosine foods are animal proteins – steak, fish, etc.
• Of course, everyone who eats meat cooks it first – which we now know strips the food of the tyrosine that they were trying to get in the first place.

Why care about tryptophan?

• Tryptophan is an essential amino acid which functions as a biochemical precursor for the neurotransmitter serotonin.
• Serotonin deficiencies have been linked to depression.
• Serotonin is often recommended as a supplement to depressed individuals, typically in the form of animal proteins. As this research shows, it’s better to get tryptophan from raw, plant-based foods.

Eat these instead to get your tyrosine:

• Raw almonds
• Raw avocadoes
• Raw pumpkin seeds
• Raw sesame seeds
• E3 Live Blue-Green Algae

Eat these instead to get your tryptophan:

• Raw cacao
• Sprouted Oats
• Raw Sesame seeds
• Sprouted chickpeas
• Raw Sunflower seeds
• Raw Pumpkin seeds
• Spirulina
• Bananas
• Sprouted lentils

We’re currently developing an advanced retreat program at the House of Verona to help depressed individuals. If you’d like to hear more about this, click here. Thanks!

This nutrient rebuilds collagen

If you’re like me, you’re spending every spare moment outside soaking up the rare Canadian sunshine.

The dilemma is that I want gorgeous, tanned skin, but I have to grapple with the fact that the sun contributes to premature wrinkles and breaks down collagen in our skin’s cellular matrix.

Although this happens, our bodies do regenerate new collagen. Lifestyle choices dictate how much collagen is made and how much is destroyed.

Vitamin C is vital to the production of new collagen. You can help your body rebuild what was destroyed over the weekend by consuming the vitamin in the form of whole, raw foods.

How vitamin C helps produce collagen

When the body produces collagen, a complex series of events takes place both inside and outside of cells.
Dr Jerry Gordon, a national dean’s list scholar in undergraduate biology at Rutgers, explains that Vitamin C is active inside of cells, where it hydroxylates, or adds hydrogen and oxygen to lysine and proline, which are amino acids.

“This helps form procollagen, a precursor molecule, which is then made into collagen outside of the cell. Without vitamin C, collagen formation is disrupted.”

Dr Gordon also cautions that “vitamin C is easily damaged during the food preparation stage, such as during chopping, exposure to air, cooking, boiling, and being submerged in water.”

To maximize your intake of vitamin C, always try to eat whole, raw foods as much as possible.

You can’t eat too much vitamin C – if it’s from whole foods

The recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of vitamin C is 60 to 90 milligrams per day, depending on age and gender. The average person consumes 72 mg (about 1 orange), but there’s nothing wrong with getting more.

It’s only possible to get vitamin C toxicity from consuming too much of the vitamin through supplements or fortified foods. Through whole food sources, it’s not possible to obtain toxicity because our bodies are able to cope by storing unused vitamins.

Disclaimer

This is not a license to go outside and bake, unprotected. Getting vitamin D is healthy, but either go inside or cover up when you feel yourself starting to burn.

Sources:

• Dr Jerry Gordon
• Nutritiondata.com
• Sizer, F. Whitney, E. Nutrition: Concepts and Controversies. 10th edition. Thomson Wadsworth Publishing. Belmont, California. ISBN 0534645062.

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